City of Toronto parking lots are overflowing, costing drivers thousands

City-run parking lots in downtown Toronto are over-burdened, forcing people to park on to the street nearby where they get thousands of parking tickets every month.

Data on city-run parking facilities across Toronto obtained by Canada.com, combined with city parking infraction data, show a strong correlation between tiny parking lots situated close to critical infrastructure and spikes in parking tickets issued close to those lots.

In the middle of one of Toronto’s most prestigious neighbourhoods, 74 Yorkville Ave, is a relatively spacious 172-spot parking garage. But it overflows regularly and as many as 500 parking tickets are handed out within 100 metres of it. Similar situations exist along the trendy Queen West shopping district, the restaurant-heavy Danforth strip and the upper class Forest Hill village on Spadina.

Of Toronto’s 241 off-street parking facilities, more than 30 overflow frequently enough that there are more than 200 parking tickets per day issued within 100 metres of the parking lot.

By contrast, the city’s largest parking lot — a 2,087 parking-spot behemoth below city hall on Queen St. — has less than 1 parking ticket per day handed out within 100 metres of it.

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This interactive allows you to see the size of each parking garage in the city and how many parking tickets are handed out within 100 metres of it. Size of the circle indicates the number of parking tickets, while darker fill colours indicate higher-capacity lots.

The city of Toronto’s largest parking lots are, reasonably enough, situated at the terminus points of the city’s the main transit corridors. Several large park-and-ride stations exist at the end of the subway lines and at core linkage points like Yonge/Bloor and Union Station.

Collectively, those TTC commuter lots — which have a capacity as high as 1,683 and as low as 72 — have an average of only eight parking tickets per month handed out within 100 metres of those lots.

This data only includes city-run parking facilities operating under the Green P banner.

City-run parking lots in downtown Toronto are over-burdened, forcing people to park on to the street nearby where they get thousands of parking tickets every month. Data on city-run parking facilities across Toronto obtained by Canada.com, combined with city parking infraction data, shows just how bad the situation for downtown drivers is.